Coucher de soleil sur les voiles... (Esprit voile 2024), 2024

Olivier Messas   Best sellers Emerging artists

The sea and sailing still inspire me and I continue to paint my sailboats suspended between sky and sea in 2024...

This series started in 2012 is currently one of my most exhibited series in galleries. [Driven by the wind on a sailboat... This series is inspired by a sailboat trip in the south of France, between the island of Porquerolle and Saint-Tropez... “I know the skies bursting in lightning, and the waterspouts, and the surf and the currents: I know the evening, the exalted dawn like a crowd of doves, and I have sometimes seen what man thought he saw! » “The drunken boat" by Rimbaud perhaps inspired this series where it is about travel and sailboats but not only… Passenger of his boat at the same time, prisoner and consenting, adventurer of sensations sometimes gentle, sometimes strong, Olivier lets himself be carried away by the wind and heads towards the unknown. He is not afraid of the relentless vagaries of nature but, on the contrary, allows himself to be seduced by all its merciful energies and intoxicated by the wind, water and time. His paintings recreate these ancestral pleasures of being on the water, of listening to the silence of the sea, of dreaming to the little blue music of the waves mixed with that of the wind in the sails. But with this series “Sail Spirit", it is above all life that is in question: we are all long-distance captains, when pushed by the wind, while it knocks against the sails and the sailboat leans abruptly at sea level and we want to reach its port. We are all reckless sailors, navigating rough seas, buccaneers tossed around by waves and troughs, trying to hang on and not sink. Frightened at the idea of drowning, we maneuver, we try to keep control of our boat so that it does not overturn, because of too big a wave or too violent a gust which would tear our sails to pieces. Our life is a long sailboat that we must constantly put back into balance... With this series, “Voil Spirit", Olivier, invites us to sort things out, not to be afraid, to choose the important, not to letting ourselves be swallowed up by the little things, and just moving forward, on our drunken boat... Written by W. Willebrod Wegimont, author, screenwriter. ] *** Sea and sailing is still heavily inspiring me, so I will continue and further develop my series “Sailing Spirit" in 2021 with sailing boats between sky and sea… This series will turn more abstract this year.